According to the Meals on Wheels Association of America, for every $1 spent on senior meals, $50 is saved on Medicaid expenses for the low-income elderly.

When people’s basic needs are met–especially housing and food–their health improves, and healthcare services rendered are more effective.

Reducing health care costs is a top priority for every mainstream policymaker right now, but to do so thoroughly and well means addressing poverty as a matter of public health.

Legislative, self-described fiscal conservatives are often too gun-shy about spending some money now to save massively in the long run. Blame it on politcal culture, blame it on the survival need for reelection. It’s just one reason ModCon supports term limits. Yet, would that really solve it all? Doubtful.

Turning the ship of what voters reward is perhaps the most important task modern conservatives face. We welcome your ideas.

The first and last time that I was sent home from school for bad behavior stemmed from my inherent hatred of the Russian people. The year was 2056, and I had stood up in the middle of our crowded Science Hall to raise both middle fingers to the Russian Ambassador, in protest that he had chosen to visit our science-centered boarding school. Although he came to spread goodwill on his US tour, I could tell that this man was a brute, an old remnant from the era of Russian Militarism that had started during the Second Space Race. I seethed in anger as he talked about the cooperation of humanity in our new era of dimensional travel. Although it instantly made me the hero of the other students, there was no denying that the judgement from any moral code would render only one verdict:

I was in the wrong.

I based my rebellion on the fact that my father had died in the Second Space Race. I also based my rebellion on the 40 long years in which we had all been indoctrinated in the xenophobic culture war of our previous generation’s conflict. I had even based my rebellion on proving to all others in the school that I was different than them, refusing to believe that humanity had reached a new era of cooperation in the pursuit of a common goal.

However, I was most definitely wrong.

I apologized, struggled through our school’s mandatory sensitivity training, and engrossed myself in academic achievement. I wanted to be a dimensionaut so badly that I worked twice as hard as the next person. The negative energy that fueled my one act of rebellion disappeared in the productivity of scientific pursuit. Here in America, I learned to love human beings collectively, while our school contributed to advancement after advancement. Until HE showed up.

Yuri was 12 months my junior, but ahead of me in nearly every scientific metric. I was the top of my class, an average athlete, and a moderate success socially. Yuri, on the other hand, was able to excel at everything, and he soon gained a collective adoration from the student body. It was as if the deposed Russian Genomics experiments were conducted in secret, producing a superhuman teenager to compete with my trajectory. I was humbled, and the anger seethed yet again.

How dare he come to MY school and diminish my chances of becoming a dimensionaut? At this rate I would be resigned to the space program, or even worse: Politics. I redoubled my efforts, and chose to beat him at my strengths. Americans were classically more competitive at the improvisational and creative aspects of The Trials, and I began working these muscles as best I could. I spent hours in the lab creating new scientific devices. My breakthroughs ranged from domestic devices that allowed me to understand the rudimentary language of higher functioning animals, to designs for an acceleromatrix that would use the Earth’s gravity to fire high speed projectiles at incoming asteroids. These were my most fruitful years, and by the time that I had reached college I was on the fast track to the dimensionaut program.

But so was Yuri.

Although I hated him at the time, I needed him. As The Modern Conservative always says, Iron sharpens Iron. It was only through my new placement out of my comfort zone that I achieved such heights at such a young age.

I firmly believe in American excellence, and if we are to escape the very real possibility of stagnation, we must allow our children to compete in the global human race.

My dimension is very similar to yours, and competition between the US and the Soviets allowed us rapid advancement without a compromise of our principles. Every human being wants fulfillment, and a national goal is the best way to achieve that. Although your dimension is unfettered by a century long Cold War as mine was, there are plenty of competitive situations that we can choose to strive within. Game-changing technological achievements such as energy independence, robotic labor for all, or even free internet could ignite a new sense of national pride and elevate our species as a whole with a distinctly American footprint. Technological gains for all humanity would give us a moral authority again, similar to the global judgement of capitalism over communism in your dimension’s recent past.

However, in my opinion, no goal is as thrilling or as American as a the New Frontier of Space. The vastness of space has thrilled our species since prehistory, and the conservative ideals of self reliance, industriousness, and fortitude would be necessary for our re-entrance into this unclaimed frontier.

But we won’t get there without competition. Bring it on, Russia/India/China, we’re gunning for ya.

Stay tuned for my next article on how Yuri and I both became Dimensionauts!

The 2005 book Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage, aims to answer the question of why young, unmarried, uneducated women choose to have one or several children, despite their inability to support them without government assistance. The authors provide fair and respectful explanations that leave the reader generally satisfied with a plausible narrative to the shameless “welfare queen” trope.

After profiling young mothers for several years in urban Philadelphia, the authors concluded that these women seek the “achievement” of children and single motherhood in the absence of any other obtainable goals. Early motherhood does not hold these women back from college, a white collar job, a caring husband and a house in the suburbs–statistically those things were never within reach for them to begin with. Many of the mothers interviewed claimed that without their children to take care of, they would have succumbed to the violence and drugs of their surroundings.

In addition to providing purpose, children heal the emotional isolation prevalent in blighted urban neighborhoods. The stereotype of poor and minority families fiercely looking out for one another is illusory; many of the women profiled were raised in neglectful, abuseful, broken households. Without their children, many said they would have no one to look out for them, and no one to love in return, especially since marriage or longterm commitment from the fathers was so culturally atypical. Many of the women preferred to be single parents since there was a dearth of drug-free, non-incarcerated, employed men around to be eligible partners and co-parents.

Since the book was written, very little has been done on the public policy front to incentivize family stability in the inner city. But this book will cause you to question any preconceived notions of teen mothers as lazy or entitled–rather than desperate and shut out from the quality of life that so many of their young adult peers enjoy.

However, ModCon thinks the loss was caused by a confluence of factors–the main one being entrenchment in self-serving DC policies. As an elected rep you have to dance with the one that brought ya. Let this be an important reminder to all of us who have been given any role, lest we too suffer the Cantor effect.

For your viewing pleasure, below are some of the most stylish women working in politics today. First ladies and royalty have been included, since those roles also demand public responsibilities. In no particular order:

1. Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader

2. Queen Rania of Jordan

3. UK First Lady Samantha Cameron

4. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand

5. Fmr. Sec. Condoleezza Rice

6. Rep. Michele Bachmann

7. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge

8. US First Lady Michelle Obama

Just eight, you ask? Yes. Because style, like power, should not lower its standards to meet quotas.